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*****

Former college football star Jake Dublin’s wildly popular sports blog also details his personal life. And lately it’s all about Sophie, the pretty young woman who just moved into his apartment building. His readers know her only as “Elevator Girl,” and they’re all rooting for Jake to score.

The blog posts and banter with his followers are all in good fun, and he fully intends to come clean with the woman he’s wooing and wowing. That is, until she confides that she grew up in a house full of jocks and even dated a few. Her verdict? Never again!

Jake knows he needs to confess. But somewhere along the line he fell in love with Sophie and can’t stand the thought of losing her. So he procrastinates, and blogs, and digs himself deeper into a hole, until it all leads to a showdown that’s so nail-biting, not even the best play-by-play guy could ever have seen it coming.

I absolutely love these novella love stories – you spend a couple of hours and end up feeling all warm & fuzzy – and Play by Play is no different.  It may be short and sweet but it packs a lot of romantic fun into 50 or so pages.  Even though you can see the trouble coming from the first chapter, it is still amusing to see Jake get himself into a pickle and then try to get himself out of it.  It’s got a cute premise with part of the story being told as entries and comments on Jake’s blog and of course that causes some of his problems … but like any good love story it all works out in the end.

Donovan has an engaging writing style and her characters pull you in right away.  She manages to give readers a good understanding of her characters and their motivation in just the few pages she has.  Granted it might be a little too predictable for some, but considering it is a short book I think she does a fantastic job of telling a complete and entertaining love story.  I found myself laughing and cringing and turning pages as fast as I could, and then closed the book (well, turned off my e-reader) with a little giggle.  I’m definitely looking forward to more stories in the Playmakers series and I hope they are all as engrossing, with that little inventive twist thrown in.